Friday, 1 July 2016

Reviews Moving Target by Tony J Fyler

Torchwood: Moving
Target

Tony Fyler takes aim.

‘I’m the target?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Why?!’

‘Why not?’

‘I haven’t done anything!’

‘No, but I’m sure you’ll be terrifically
entertaining soon enough.’

The joy of the Torchwood
audios from Big Finish so far is that they’ve had their cake and eaten it. Yes,
there’s some sort of overarching plot with a Big Bad called The Committee, but
beyond that, the stories we’ve encountered have felt free to bounce us all the
way around the Torchwood universe of time and space – back to the days of
Yvonne Hartman of Torchwood One, back before Ianto died, so he could plummet to
the ground in a rocket while on an insurance sales call, back even to the early
days of Torchwood with Jack shepherding Queen Victoria around London and out of
the path of a time-sucking alien slobber-beast. They’ve even gone forward,
beyond the realms of TV Torchwood to investigate extraordinary creepiness at an
old people’s home. What this gives us is both the thrill of trying to piece
together a conspiracy theory plot in terms of The Committee and the excitement
of freedom – if there’s a good enough story from any point in Torchwood
history, it can be told.

Which is presumably why
Suzie Costello, first of the Torchwood Cardiff team to die on-screen, is back
from the dead (again) in Torchwood: Moving Target by Guy Adams.

Indira Varma, who played
Costello in two TV stories, gets the chance here to do something that’s never
been seen before – she shows us ‘Normal Suzie.’ Before she began plotting and
breaking too many rules and becoming at least a notional baddie, this is Suzie
Costello in the Torchwood world we’ve never really seen before, the pre-Gwen
Cooper era when Suzie was one of the Hub’s main agents.

Adams and Varma together
create a Normal Suzie who’s likeably everywoman – we can’t help but agree with
her immediate sentiments when her alarm clock goes off at the start of the day
(though arguably, ‘lead character wakes up’ is one of the great clichés all new
writers are told to avoid). And as Moving Target rolls along, we get a sense of
her as a woman who’s friendly-by-Torchwood-agent-standards, but flawed down a
faultline that will eventually lead to the Suzie we know from the screen.

The plot is very simple,
Adams generally preferring to keep his event-structures fairly uncluttered to
allow the characters to fill in the majority of the action: alien fat-cats have
paid to go on a hunt, like a bunch of American dentists who go to shoot lions.
Earth has been designated a hunting ground, but all non-prey have been frozen
in time so they remain unaware of the incursion. In fact, there’s only one
prey-animal on this hunt, a young woman named Alex, whom Naomi McDonald invests
with a curious combination of adorable verbal diarrhoea and annoying lack of
consequence, like a young, doe-eyed, pre-Doctor Donna Noble.

Fortunately, for complex
reasons explained late in the day and largely to do with Suzie’s predilection
for (*cough, cough*) borrowing unauthorised bits of Torchwood kit, Alex is not
left alone on a planet full of dickless alien dentists who like to shoot small
squealing things. Suzie steps in almost instinctively to the role of protector
in what is, to all intents and purposes, the plot of Predator, only British,
and funnier, and with a gloriously arch and snippy robot from the corporate
hunt organisers to fill in the exposition-gaps.

Is it the most intense
episode of Torchwood you’ve ever experienced? No, it wouldn’t even get out of
bed to enter such a competition. But what it does is deliver a fairly
straightforward ‘hunting is bad’ lesson (also previously delivered in Star Trek
DS9’s Captive Pursuit episode) to get our heroes running, while really being a
lesson in Suzie’s character and priorities.

There are developments
later in the story that we’d love to tell you about, but aren’t going to,
because they’d ruin the start for you – suffice it to say that the snippy
robot, voiced with a highly effective Hitch-Hiker’s Guide tone by Nicholas
Burns, not only makes us question our species’ sophistication and right to a
place in the universe, it makes us question our own individual place in the
universe, as well as the realities behind the softening fictions we tell
ourselves to inflate our own worth and keep putting one foot in front of
another.

‘You fight wars because imaginary
friends in the sky tell you to. Frankly, I’m surprised you can dress
yourselves.’

There are moments towards
the end where Adams’ script becomes tough listening if you happen to be
inflicted with anything so terrifying as a sunny disposition, and certainly,
the choice that’s left to Suzie as to where her priorities lie – and the
decision to which she comes – is startlingly bleak. But there’s a certain
creeping bleakness even before that, as Suzie and Alex get drunk on vodka while
killing alien hunters, and the honesty of these two flawed women trying to make
themselves matter in the world is barbed and shocking when they turn it on each
other. It’s enough to make you swallow down the humour of their interactions
and look for a moment at the reality of most human lives – the bare, naked
drives and needs that push us on to do the things we do, and the cold swash of
anaesthetising optimism we need to make us ignore the nakedness of those drives
in ourselves and others. When Suzie is faced with a seemingly impossible
choice, the very nature of its impossibility makes her options clear, and she
makes an unexpected move to fulfil her own needs. There’s an element in our
optimism that makes us whine at that point that the ‘right thing’ to happen
would be for the unending fleet of violent alien dentists to realise our
importance as sentient beings and stop their cull, but you only need to look
around the world with honest eyes to know that’s not what happens. In the same
way that rich idiots continue to pay insane amounts of money for the pleasure
of killing impressive (but as far as we know, not sentient) creatures – and in
Adams’ script, the metaphor of consequence is extended to meat-eaters who don’t
stop eating meat despite the inhumane treatment of animals en route to the roasting tray – so the threat of an army of fairly
pathetic aliens who want to bag a human is not going away just because we want
it to. Adams makes it clear that to pin your hopes on such an outcome is to be
a chicken wishing really quite hard not to become a McNugget.

And so Suzie Costello
makes a move that not only meets her own psychological needs but has the added
bonus of restarting time in the world. She makes a decision that seems
impossible, and we learn that that’s essentially who Suzie Costello is
– a saver of worlds and a maker of hard choices, inspired by her need to make a
difference, to be special, to be good at what she does.

Guy Adams is a writer who
lures you in with normality and character comedy, and more often than not,
delivers a stunning rabbit-punch to the face before he lets you go. Moving
Target is another impressive entry in his growing Torchwood resume. Where to place
it in the inevitable fan-ranking of stories is a tricky call, but probably right
alongside another of his face-punchers, More Than This, would be its natural
home.

The return of Suzie
Costello to the Torchwood universe is a very welcome development, and Varma
gives her a capability and a charm that makes return engagements a thrilling
prospect. Moving Target finally teaches us enough about Suzie Costello to make
her inclusion in the Torchwood team make sense, as well as bedding in the flaws
that eventually lead to her death.

Give Moving Target a spin
today – you’ll think you’re in for a fun hour, and you are, but be aware, the
fun comes with a price.